File sharing site BT Junkie has decided to call it quits. In the wake of MegaUpload’s being shut down earlier this year, BT Junkie has voluntarily decided to throw in the towel.
A statement on the website reads, “This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we’ve decided to voluntarily shut down. We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on. It’s been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!”
The site was never directly targeted by copyright holders, an unnamed BTJunkie founder told TorrentFreak. However, the site was reported to the US Trade Representative (USTR) in 2011, the RIAA and MPAA listed the torrent index as a ‘rogue’ site, and Google censored the search term.
Despite avoiding legal attention so far, the site’s founder told TorrentFreak that the legal action against file-sharing sites Megaupload and The Pirate Bay played an important role in its closure.
We all celebrated the public upswell that seemed to bring victory over SOPA and PIPA, but it’s hard not to think that the almost immediate action against MegaUpload was a retaliatory strike, designed to prove a point.
DAMM….BT was by far the best torrent site around. The rating system was always accurate, I never got a bad torrent from there. Thanks to the founders who kept it going for so long, you will be truly missed!!!!!
Many people think the RIAA and the MPAA have been defeated in their quest to push their definition of copyright protection down the public’s throat. They are wrong, this war has just started and the corporations are switching to a Fabian strategy to get their way.
They can’t get sweeping bills passed in Congress, no problem. They’ll just encourage their government lackeys (I prefer the Chinese communist expression of “running dog’s,” but I’m not a communist so I will stick with lackey’s.) to slowly choke off one BT site after another. I used to think such a strategy was damn near impossible, but not any more.
A number of governments around the world also want to see the internet corralled and the people who use the internet controlled; or at least closely monitored. I hate to sound like some kind of doomsday prophet or even worse, a libertarian. (Just joking Tim.) However, the signs are there for anyone to see.